William Mitchell and Mary Jane "Jennie" Leyda

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Husband William Mitchell ^{1 2 3}

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           Born: 10 Oct 1848 - Jackson Twp, Venango Co, PA 1 3
     Christened: 
           Died: Aft 1910
         Buried: 

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         Father: John Mitchell (1821-1880) 3 4
         Mother: Margaret Hunter (1822-1875) 3 4

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       Marriage: 19 Nov 1868 - Georgetown, Mercer Co, PA 1 5

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Wife Mary Jane "Jennie" Leyda ^{2 5}

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           Born: 30 Apr 1849 6
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           Died: Abt 22 Apr 1922 6
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         Father: James Leyda (1804-1891) 2 7
         Mother: Jane Reed (1806-1856) 2 7

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Children

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1 F Minnie L. Mitchell ⁵

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           Born: 1873 6
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2 M William Albert Mitchell ⁵

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           Born: 
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3 F Martha J. Mitchell ⁵

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           Born: 
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4 M Roy Hunter Mitchell ⁵

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           Born: 1882 6
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         Spouse: Estella Isabell Ashton (1884/1885-1986) 8
           Marr: 9 Feb 1910 - Franklin, Venango Co, PA 8

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5 M Harry Franklin Mitchell ⁵

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6 F Maude E. Mitchell ⁵

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           Born: 1889 6
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7 M Thomas L. Mitchell ⁵

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           Born: 1895 6
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General Notes: Husband - William Mitchell

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He was born in French Creek Township, Venango County, Pennsylvania. [HVC 1879, 651]
He remained at home up to the age of eighteen years, when he found his first employment in the oil business as a tool dresser at Rouseville, Pennsylvania, when that borough was at the height of its prosperity. He went to work for Greenfield & Hart, and meantime visited several other places where great excitement raged, thousands who were anxious to invest in oil putting their last cent in worthless holes. Mr. Mitchell made several ventures in unproductive locations, including some on Sugar creek, where there really never was any profitable development, and he drilled some wells on Cherry run and followed pumping at Rouseville until 1868, when the reawakening at Pleasantville drew him there. He was engaged there as a tool dresser until the spring of 1869, when, having married, he settled on a farm tract one and a half miles east of Cooperstown, remaining there two years. But he preferred occupation in the oil fields, and accordingly took a position as tool dresser at St. Petersburg, Clarion County. On his return to Venango County he secured three leases on Galloway Hill, one mile north of Rocky Grove, covering some thirty-five acres on the Fee, Kunkle and Evans farms, and the wells there proved very remunerative, his progress being very gratifying during the nine years he passed in that location. At the end of that period he disposed of his holdings to advantage, and in 1880 entered the Bradford field, where in company with John Kuhn he obtained a small lease so far as area was concerned, though its four wells yielded a daily output of one hundred and twenty-five barrels, a handsome return even though oil was bringing but fifty-two and a half cents a barrel at the time. Though the three years he was operating there were unusually successful so far as the profit on his labors and capital were concerned, he left the field practically without a dollar owing to reverses which he suffered in the Bradford Oil Exchange, and he returned to Franklin to retrieve as much as possible. Here he resumed work as a tool dresser, and also did some drilling on the Jake Sheasley property north of Galloway Hill, Fern City, in Clarion County, was then attracting considerable attention among oil men, and he became a foreman for the Chauncey Oil Company there, attending to their lease until 1888, when he returned to Pleasantville, which was his home for the following thirty years. During that time he was engaged principally as an oil gauger, formerly with the National Pipe Line and then with its successor, the Standard Oil Company, and though the territory covered by the latter has been considerably restricted his responsibilities include the gauging of about one third of all oil produced in the territory of which Pleasantville is the center, the production of some thirty-five local leases being taken by his lines. Practically all of his time was given to his duties as gauger, though he owned and operates a small production of his own in the neighborhood. [CAB, 1049]

1 J. H. Newton, History of Venango County, Pennsylvania (Columbus, OH: J. A. Caldwell Publishers, 1879), Pg 651.

2 —, History of Venango County, Pennsylvania (Chicago, IL: Brown, Runk, & Co., Publishers, 1890), Pg 1024.

3 Charles A. Babcock, Venango County, Pennsylvania, Her Pioneers and People (Chicago, IL: J. H. Beers & Co., 1919), Pg 1048.

4 —, History of Indiana County, Pennsylvania (Newark, OH: J. A. Caldwell, 1880), Pg 411.

5 Charles A. Babcock, Venango County, Pennsylvania, Her Pioneers and People (Chicago, IL: J. H. Beers & Co., 1919), Pg 1049.

6 Karen S. Golden Rodgers, The Mitchell Family 1772 - 1989 (Self-published, 1990), Pg 14.

7 J. G. White, A Twentieth Century History of Mercer County Pennsylvania (Chicago, IL: The Lewis Publishing Company, 1909), Pg 1053.

8 Karen S. Golden Rodgers, The Mitchell Family 1772 - 1989 (Self-published, 1990), Pg 34.